1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to devices and methods for making carbon nanotube structures and, particularly, to a device and a method for making a carbon nanotube film.
2. Description of Related Art
Carbon nanotubes are novel carbonaceous material and received a great deal of interest since the early 1990s. The carbon nanotubes are electrically conductive along their length, chemically stable, and each can have a very small diameter (much less than 100 nanometers) and large aspect ratios (length/diameter). Due to these and other properties, carbon nanotubes have become a significant focus of research and development for use in electron emitting devices, sensors, transistors, and other devices.
Generally, the carbon nanotubes prepared by conventional methods are in particle or powder forms. The particle or powder-shaped carbon nanotubes limit the applications they can be used. Thus, preparation of macro-scale carbon nanotube structures, such as carbon nanotube films, has attracted lots of attention.
A conventional method for making a carbon nanotube film includes providing a growing substrate, forming a catalyst layer on the growing substrate, providing a reacting furnace, placing the growing substrate with the catalyst layer into the reacting furnace, and introducing a carbonaceous gas and heating the reacting furnace to grow the carbon nanotube film. However, the carbon nanotube film made by the above-described method is formed on the growing substrate and does not have a free-standing structure. Further, the carbon nanotubes in the carbon nanotube film are entangled with each other and disorderly distributed in the carbon nanotube film. Thus, the excellent properties of the carbon nanotubes are poorly utilized.
In order to solve the above problems, a method for making a nanofiber film is taught by US 2008/0170982 A to Baughman et al. The method includes arranging nanofibers to provide a substantially parallel nanofiber array having a degree of inter-fiber connectivity within the nanofiber array, and drawing said nanofibers from the nanofiber array as a ribbon or sheet without substantially twisting the ribbon or sheet. The nanofiber array has a columnar shape and can be a carbon nanotube array.
When the nanofibers are drawn from the nanofiber array to form the ribbon or sheet, the width of the nanofiber ribbon or sheet is substantially equal to the width of the drawn nanofibers. However, the width of drawn nanofibers is inevitably affected by the columnar nanofiber array, thus the nanofiber ribbon or sheet cannot have a uniform width, so it is not entirely suitable for industrial applications.
What is needed, therefore, is a device and method for making a carbon nanotube film of uniform width.